World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy on Friday said that there are “technically no insurmountable obstacles” in resolving the long-struggling Doha Round of trade liberalisation talks this year, but that this timeline was always a political rather than technical one.
In the so-called WTO stock-taking, regarding the size of the gaps that remain “we are not where we wanted to be,” he said in a press briefing on 26 March, explaining that there are two categories of issues that remain: negotiation areas where gaps have been numbered and where options are on the table, and negotiation areas where the gaps are “not in a shape that allows for political arbitration.”
On issues related to the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), several sources said there have been no major breakthroughs but that consultations are being held.
Meanwhile, a new WTO report on trade prospects for 2010 predicts a 9.5 percent expansion. This expansion will “help recover some, but by no means all, of the ground lost in 2009 when the global economic crisis sparked a 12.2 percent contraction,” said a WTO press release.